During the past decade the sending of documents from one location to another in electronic (soft) form has become common place. Initially facsimile (FAX) began to replace hard delivery of documents and now electronic mail (e-mail) and other forms of electronic transfer are becoming popular. Such electronic document transmission has the advantage of transmitting large amounts of information across large physical expanses almost instantaneously.
However, such electronic transmissions are not without their short comings. For example, an obvious problem with point to point electronic transmission of documents is the necessity for compatible equipment having particular functionality at both the sending and receiving locations. Issues with respect to the ability to communicate between various configurations of communication equipment have become less pronounced in recent years, however there still remains the need for the sending and receiving locations to possess electronic document processing systems capable of meaningful data communication.
Additionally, there remains the need for the system from which the document is transferred to have the capability to accept the document to be transferred in whatever form it exists and to convert this to the electronic data stream ultimately transferred. Likewise, there is a need for the system to which the document is transferred to possess the capability to reproduce, either through electronic display or physical printing, the transferred document. Where graphical images, as opposed to textual messages, or large or otherwise complicated documents are transferred, the capability to reproduce such documents may easily exceed the capability of a typical present day communication system.
A more subtle problem with point to point transmission of electronic documents today is confirmation of a successful transfer between the sending site and the receiving site. Often current day transmission systems, such as e-mail through such systems as the Internet, report successful transmission of a document, but do not provide confirmation of receipt of the document. This can require an additional step by the sender such as communication via other means to independently confirm that the document was received by the intended system. Furthermore, often documents are transmitted to hostile or adverse parties in order to preserve legal rights etcetera. In such circumstances it is not uncommon for these parties to be less than forthright with information regarding the receipt of the document.
Ancillary to this problem is the fact that there is little or no physical proof of transmission of the document, if later circumstances require proof that the document was in fact transferred. For example, typically there is no independent third party to confirm that indeed a document was transferred. Likewise there is no physical proof of receipt of the document by the receiving party. Such lack of a “paper trail” with respect to the transmission of a document renders electronic transfer undesirable for some documents, such as legal documents or the like, where proof of transmission and/or receipt is necessary.
Furthermore, as electronic document transfer is relatively new to the typical office infrastructure, there are not always reliable procedures in place at the receiving location to insure its proper handling. For example, as physical delivery of documents as mail by a postal authority is very old, businesses and the like have instituted infrastructure in the form of policies and procedures to ensure its proper handling from receipt at the business to its ultimate delivery to the intended, or appropriate, individual. However, electronic transmission of documents often short circuit this infrastructure and avoid proper internal handling, such as docketing or otherwise associating the document with related information.
Moreover, once provided a simple public gateway from which to receive electronic documents from the public at large, such as the Internet, businesses are often overwhelmed with the increase in incoming documents. For example, because such electronic gateways are often very inexpensive or even free for the public to communicate documents directly to a recipient, i.e., the above described businesses, often recipients are the target of a number of unsolicited and even undesired communications. It is not unheard of for a particularly upset individual to automate a document transmission system in order to flood a recipient with communications which, at the least, require the separation of these documents from those of importance to the recipient. In worst case scenarios, such efforts have lead to the recipients electronic document system reaching capacity and thus being unavailable to receive desired and even necessary messages.
A need therefore exists in the art of document transfer for establishing a system and method for providing the speed of transmission of electronic documents with the advantages of independent third party receipt and/or delivery of documents.
Another need exists in the art for providing a robust receiving system capable of accepting electronic document transfer from a wide variety of transmission systems. Similarly, a need exists for this receiving system to provide for the physical reproduction of complex and lengthy transmitted documents such that most forms of text as well as precise graphical images may be reproduced on a variety of media sizes.
A further need exists in the art of document transfer for providing a means by which a designated recipient of an electronic document may selectively accept electronic documents, or otherwise discourage unwanted document transmissions, without undesirably affecting the recipient's electronic document acceptance system.